Twitter is the new email. It's not so much micro-blogging as mass Instant Messaging. The great part about an application like Tweetdeck, is you don't miss anything. I am not tied to my computer watching Tweets and Hours go by. I log into my Tweetdeck several times a day and here is how I play it.

There are other grouping and organizing tools for Twitter, Seesmic Desktop and PeopleBrowsr being two notable competitors, but for my money the simplicity of Tweetdeck, and some say the ugliness, is what makes it work for me. So when I am looking for outside info or stimulation from the web, I go to iGoogle and Tweetdeck.

Above you can see how my Tweetdeck Dashboard is laid out. My attention (deficit) flows from left-to-right, being a right-hander. Far left I have my "close" group. These are folks that I have shared some face time or extended conversations. These are my "trusted advisers." Rarely do I miss A SINGLE TWEET from my "close" group. And the reason is, Tweetdeck threads and keeps the tweets organized for me.

So when I have been away all day, say Easter Sunday, I merely open Tha Deck and in the "close" column is all the tweets that have occurred while I was offline.

My next Tweetdeck columns are

2. "pro" for Social Media or Business professionals

3. "all friends." for the 2,000+ people I am "following" (you can see how this is a loose term, as I am not likely to scroll back through my "all friends" column unless I am digging deep for inspiration)

4. search "jmacofearth" this allows me to see any time my Twitter name is used, incase I don't follow someone, I will still see their message

5. "facebook status updates" this is NEW to Tweetdeck and how awesome to put FB in the same tool as Twitter

6. "direct messages" this column run off the page, but I can see when the avatar icons change and thus I need to scroll over and see what someone DM-d to me.

So with my Tweetdeck Dashboard, my attention flows from Left (full-attention) to Right in ever decreasing levels of attention for me. While Facebook updates are important, they don't move or change as quickly so I can browse them with less frequency. I know a number of people who don't like Twitter because the information seems overwhelming. And they say the Facebook updates feel just about manageable. Well, now, it's just another stream in my Tweetdeck Dashboard. It fits into the format perfectly. And with Tweetdeck I can post to Twitter and Facebook with a single message.

Twitter Rule #2 Get a Twitter Management Strategy and a Twitter App Works for YouThe information on Twitter is amazing. You can slice it, dice it, search it, track it, measure it and graph it, but if you can't control it what it will do is blow your head off. I cannot imagine a process for using Twitter via twitter.com that would allow me to make any sense of the vast amount of valuable (and value-less) data coming through Twitter.

I have given an example of how my strategy has evolved using Tweetdeck. My advice is to pick something and the work it. See how it fits and how you can organize the stream-runneth-over of Twitter follows.